I like these creatures! And this piece is simply well done!

I was in the audience of several hundred people when Karl Sims presented this research video on Evolved Virtual Creatures at Siggraph in 1994.

During his presentation, Karl Sims narrated live a very funny commentary of the creatures attempt to acquire mobility or to beat out another opponent creature for a prize.

The entire auditorium broke out in exuberant laughter which grew on each "play by play" of the various creatures evolution attempts.

I'm so glad I found this video in archives.org!

It's my first visit to this website and will be back to look for more gems.

Thank you.

I just want to point out that there has been development on the ideas presented in this video, on several fronts. Check this guy's work: http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?danlessin

Apeism, if you understood anything about evolution, you'd understand that every single form is a "transitional" form: that is, the form is simply a transition between an earlier form and a later form. You're a "transitional" form between your parents and your children (if you have any, that is).

As for the video, it's amazing! I can't believe this was done in 1994! This is impressive even by today's standards.

Empty words, drawings, charts, and these computer graphics are not observable evidences for evolution.

When all else fails, when the transitional fossils can't be found, just create some on a computer... right? A single fossilized creature in the fossil record (i.e. Archaeopteryx) doesn't prove it's a transitional fossil.

@benjohn: It's incredible indeed that this work is still cutting edge in the field after more than 15 years, and here is a reason why:

It typically takes several years of involvement to write such a program. Most of the people who did it and published in the field spend their Master's or PhD doing it, and once the program works, it's time to graduate and move on. The program they developed is usually so complex that no student wants to continue the effort.

That's academia. In industry, you'd have to convince your boss to pay you and wait for 2-3 years before any result comes out... Also, there seem to be quite a long way between the successful completion of such a research project and an economically viable application.

In recent years, however, some software (FramSticks, Breve 3D, 3D creature evolution) have appeared that allow people to conduct similar experiments in a much shorter time. However, I don't know to which extent they allow one to reproduce Sim's results.

I am planning to do a similar thing for my Final year project in B Sc. comp science..but on 2d characters..i need to know exactly how to implement the evolutionary algorithm in coding...what exactly is the programming language for it?

I have also seen this before I got inspirated to make a similar program.
Mine is evolved realtime. (thousands of tries in the background. while you are watching)
http://www.gravitysensation.com/darwinism/

The programmer in me probably enjoys this one a little more than other folks. Now, I don't work in AI, but this vid is encouraging me to do so.

I think the earlier reviews have failed to understand how cool this film is :-)

The creatures in this film weren't "designed" by a human. They were entirely evolved by a piece of software that simulates a physical universe within a computer.

To begin with, the world is populated with rondomly generated creatures. Over time they compete and the "fittest" at various tasks come to dominate their less able siblings, giving rise to the critters that you see swiming, walking, slithering, rolling, jumping and grabbing in front of you.

In the final part of the movie where creatures are seen competing, they are literally fighting for survival and continued membership of the gene pool.

As far as I know, this work still represents the cutting edge in the field, which is incredible and sad given that it is nearly 15 years old.

This was just strange and fascinating. Essentially all about creatures someone designed on a computer, walking and swimming. He then went on to have sort of a competion of these "creatures" fighting over a box. Very simple, but with the narration, strangely fascinating.

this is so cool. It reminds me of of Thomas Ray's independently evolving code in Tierra, a internet bio-diversity reserve.

About two weeks ago.
In one presentation,
I know it.